Coloring the Perceptions of Life, Death, and Heaven: Variations in Color in Prints of the Chimney Sweep

Transcription

1 Austin Herring British Literature II Dr. Raymond Brebach 27 October 2014 Coloring the Perceptions of Life, Death, and Heaven: Variations in Color in Prints of the Chimney Sweep In William Blake s Songs of Innocence, the poet creates a variety of characters and situations to explore the human trait of innocence, as well as other ideas of life, death, and humanity in general. Besides a writer, Blake was also a printmaker, so each of the songs in this collection is accompanied by a print that illustrates a scene from the poem, emphasizes a theme in it, or otherwise enhances it using a visual. Each accompanying print is colored as well, adding a third layer of interpretation to each poem. However, Blake printed multiple editions of the Songs of Innocence in his lifetime, and every edition has different colorings, with every coloring emphasizing a different aspect of the original poem and its accompanying print. One song which is particularly interesting to compare colorings of is the Chimney Sweeper, a poem which focuses on young boys sold to work as chimney sweeps. Two particular colorings of the plate for William Blake s the Chimney Sweep emphasize starkly contrasting views on one child laborer s dream of escaping his unfortunate fate and, in turn, on life, death, and the afterlife in general. The main thing that the first plate emphasizes is the ideas of rebirth, particularly in heaven, in the song. As mentioned above, the Chimney Sweep focuses on child laborers who work as chimney sweeps, having been sold out by their parents to do horrible and dangerous

2 Herring 2 work. The poem continues to describe a dream one of the boys has one night. In it, he dreams that he and several thousand other chimney sweepers have been locked in coffins but that an angel comes and sets them free (12-14). The boys then run free, naked, laughing, and playing, and they are, in the narration washed in a river and become naked and white, and they are told by the angel they will never want joy (15-17, 20). This dream seems to represent the children dying and being taken off to heaven; they are freed from their coffins, already a symbol of death but which also symbolize their dreadful lives as chimney sweepers, by an angel, a resident of heaven, who takes them somewhere where they are washed clean, of the literal and metaphorical soot and dirt of their previous lives, made anew, given the ability to be joyous again, and told they will have God for [their] father (20). They are reborn in heaven as children, where they can finally be playful and have the childhood they missed when they were on Earth. The colors in the first plate reinforce the images and ideas of rebirth and joy in heaven apparent in this dream. The background of the plate reinforces this most strongly; it is very sunrise-like, with bright yellow, orange, and purple colors (Yale). Every sunrise is a new day; every time the sun comes up, there is a new chance to do something with one s life. Thus, the background colors of the plate reinforce the idea of a new beginning that is introduced in the dream sequence. The next most prominent color in the plate, beside those in the sunrise background, is green (Yale). Green is the color of vegetation, and, in fact, the green at the bottom of the plate seems to be the grassy green plain mentioned in the poem, at line fifteen, and green vines surround the borders of the plate. This green vegetation also represents life and, in turn, the rebirth of the children in heaven. The green vitality of the plants matches the vitality the children can now have as they are reborn in heaven and have a chance to live a full childhood. The bright

3 Herring 3 colors in general also emphasize the joy that the children experience once they reach their heavenly state in the dream. The poem, with the help of the coloring of this particular plate, with its colorful sunrise background and green, lively foreground in this case, emphasizes the joy and rebirth of the children and, in general, the rebirth of all people when they die and are given a second chance to live happily in heaven. The next plate, however, emphasizes the exact opposite images and ideas. Clearly, for one to go to heaven, one must first die, something tragic and, often, painful. In the poem, the chimney sweepers in the dream remain lock d up in coffins of black, with the coffins of black in which they are stuck symbolizing the chimneys, which are black from soot, in which they work (12). They are stuck in the coffins until the angel comes to release them and take them to heaven. The chimney sweepers are stuck working in the chimneys, dying slow deaths from their harsh work conditions, until one day they are finally released, by the metaphorical angel, and can die. The coloring of the second panel reemphasizes this negative aspect of one s journey to heaven. This second panel is entirely in black and white coloring (Houghton). In this panel, there is no joy or happiness to be found in the colors of the print, and there is no liveliness in the vegetation. Instead, there is only darkness, emphasizing not only the unhappy death imagery but the images of soot, the thing which is literally harming the children, in the original poem. Despite the happy imagery in the poem, of the children leaping and laughing as they run, the black lifelessness of the print removes all of the joy from it, instead placing the emphasis on the fact that they children must die, going through pain to do so, before they reach heaven and attain their final joy, just as many, if not all, humans must.

4 Herring 4 With these two colorings of the print for the Chimney Sweeper, two contrasting images of the journey to heaven are presented. With the first bright, colorful painting, the endpoint of the journey and the positivity of reaching that endpoint are emphasized; eventually, the children will reach heaven, having escaped their hellish fate on Earth, and will be able to be reborn and revitalized, given a second chance at life, and they will be able to attain endless joy. However, the second plate emphasizes the other side of this; the children cannot make it into heaven without first dying, so even if they do attain endless joy, they must first experience extreme pain and the end of their previous experience. These two contrasting images of the journey through life, death, and to heaven are true not only for the children chimney sweepers but for all of humanity. Though humans may eventually be able to be revitalized in heaven and attain endless joy and happiness, they must first make it through life and endure all of its pains, including its final greatest one, death, and the two prints, one colorful and joyful, the other black and lifeless, emphasize these two contrasting views and how, depending on one s mindset at any particular point in time, death can be an exciting proposition, as a new beginning, or a terrifying proposition, as a final ending.

5 Herring 5 Works Cited Blake, William. The Chimney Sweeper The Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA. Blake, William. The Chimney Sweeper Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Blake, William. ""The Chimney Sweeper"" The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton, Print.

6 Houghton Library plate: Herring 6

7 Yale Center for British Art plate: Herring 7